Unlock Your Potential: The 5 Essential Courses for Future CFOs
Learn how to be the best CFO you can be with these courses. These courses will help you become a more informed decision-maker and grow your career as a CFO.
A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is a senior executive responsible for managing a company's financial reserves. Responsibilities of the CFO include financial planning, financial risk management, monitoring cash flow and expenditure, and managing investments, and tax matters.
The future of business is complex and uncertain. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the business world in the past several years, including the rise of artificial intelligence, the shift to cloud computing, and the increasing digitalization of the workplace. Today’s CFOs need to find new ways to solve problems, reduce expenses, and increase revenue.
In the past, a typical CFO might have focused solely on managing the finances of a company, but today’s CFOs are often tasked with new responsibilities, including advanced data analysis and investment decisions.
According to some reports, the demand for CFOs is expected to rise by 11 percent in the coming years. If you are planning to pursue a career as a CFO, you will have to increase your financial awareness and the ability to make efficient decisions in a short time. There are many CFO courses available online, but not all of them are good.
If you want to get the best CFO courses, this blog will give you the 5 Best CFO courses that you can consider taking in 2023.
Top CFO Classes For Beginners List
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1. Accounting 101: Accounts Payable Best Practices For 2023
Avoid common mistakes and pitfalls when it comes to Accounts Payable. Prepare yourself for the position of CFO.
In this CFO course, you will learn:
- Accounts Payable Process
- Avoiding Fraud
- The Approval Process
- Actionable Improvement Methods
- Avoiding Common Mistakes
- Methods to Reduce Errors
- Automation of Your Accounts Payable
- Cash Flow Management
- Staff Requirements
Accounts payable are a part of every single business, no matter how big or small. There are many opportunities for mistakes, or worse, fraud, in AP.
The purpose of this course is to help you avoid the common mistakes that companies make that allow these bad things to happen so they won't happen in your business.
The information in this course will help you to avoid common errors in Accounts Payable and improve your efficiency through a variety of resources to prevent fraud in your company or company-specific Accounts Payable.
You will walk away from this course with actionable items you can put in place with your Accounts Payable to avoid common issues and to make it run smoother and more efficiently.
Course rating: 4.3 out of 5.0 (1,374 Rating total)
Duration: 1.5 Hours
Certificate: Certificate on completion
2. Think Like a CFO
Learn Finance Terminology from scratch. Accountability, operational finance, and corporate finance will all become second nature to you.
In this CFO course, you will learn:
- What questions to ask?
- Assessing a company's financing needs and developing an action plan.
- Skills necessary to understand basic concepts and feel comfortable reading, interpreting, and analyzing financial statements for decision-making.
- Capital market issues related to companies, investors, and the interaction between them.
- Economic implications of managerial decisions regarding operations, marketing, etc.
You will initially learn how to read and interpret financial statements to help diagnose and make business decisions. In addition, you will build a conceptual foundation to keep learning more sophisticated accounting and finance on your own.
Next, you will learn how to read the “story” that the balance sheet and income statement tell about the company’s operations. The insights you gain from this “financial story” will then become a tool for short-term decision-making at the top management level relating to current assets, current liabilities, and the management of working capital.
The CFO course will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of key financial issues that affect companies, investors, and their relationships in the capital markets. It is expected that after completing this course, you will comprehend most of what you read in the financial press and will be able to use the essential financial vocabulary of companies and finance professionals.
Course rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 (615 Rating total)
Duration: 1 month (10h/week)
Certificate: Certificate on completion
3. Nailing Your First Quarter as CFO
Learn how to assess your skills, team, environment, & items you should focus on in the first 100 days.
In this CFO course, you will:
- Recognize the competencies of the modern CFO.
- Recognize the maturity level of the finance function.
- Identify strategies useful for developing strategic alignment within the finance function.
When assuming the role of a CFO, you need to look for certain things. Whether this is your first year as CFO or perhaps you are transitioning into a new CFO role at another organization, you will need to take into consideration several different considerations during your first quarter.
Initially, you will learn what you need to bring to the organization. From there, you will look at team-building principles and use proven tools to help you assess the existing finance function against best practices.
Next, you will use a strategic approach to developing an overarching mission and value statement for finance to bring context to specific action plans. You will focus on structuring the finance function within the organization context to optimize and balance responsiveness to stakeholders with the need for control.
Finally, you will look at the dynamic management principles to help you initiate your first major project.
Course rating: 4.4 out of 5.0 (83 Rating total)
Duration: 1 Hour
Certificate: Certificate on completion
4. Advanced Valuation and Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital
Would you like to learn about the latest valuation methods that may help you to make better business decisions?
The course includes:
- Executive Summary
- Discounted Cash Flow Analysis
- Corporate Strategy
- Corporate Real Options
- Option Games
This Finance course will help you positively change the way you make strategic investment decisions. Step by step, you will develop the conceptual frameworks and new valuation principles for strategic investments that are difficult to value with traditional tools.
Next, you will learn how to apply DCF approaches and understand the provided case applications illustrating the powerful potential of this valuation methodology. The course considers historical analysis, the estimation of free cash flows, various DCF approaches, and multiple valuations.
Here, you will close the gap between traditional corporate finance and strategic planning by linking corporate strategy to market value. You will learn to assess the value of a company through the expanded NPV criterion, which can capture the value of the firm's growth options.
Plus, you will be provided an overview of the basic principles of game theory, which are essential for your understanding of strategic decisions. By the end of this course, you will be able to quantify the strategic component of the strategic growth option value.
Course rating: 4.6 out of 5.0 (1,197 Rating total)
Duration: 16 Hours
Certificate: Certificate on purchase
5. Charm School for Accountants/CFOs
Advanced relational skills that build rapport, increase your influence and win others to your point of view.
Initially, this CFO course teaches you four vital interpersonal/relational skills. You will master creating first impressions, improving your voice, looking like a leader, and interactive conversational techniques.
Next, you will acquire multi-disciplinary thinking, and self-confidence, express ideas persuasively, and make convincing boardroom presentations that produce lasting change.
Finally, the course shows how to develop an on-camera persona to master video conferencing, boost your creative imagination, make impactful speeches to large audiences, and remain influential at the highest levels.
Course rating: 4.2 out of 5.0 ( 31 Rating total)
Duration: 2.5 Hours
Certificate: Certificate on completion
We hope you enjoyed our article about the best online CFO courses. With this knowledge, we know that you can improve your decision-making and financial awareness with these courses. Since you've made it this far then certainly you are willing to learn more and here at Coursesity, it is our duty to enlighten people with knowledge on topics they are willing to learn.
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